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On February 26, Jeff Bezos -- founder of e-commerce giant Amazon and space travel company Blue Origin -- dropped a note to staff at his 2013 acquisition, the Washington Post, "to let you know about a change coming to our opinion pages." He also tweeted the note to the public:
"We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets. We'll cover other topics too of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others."
A single-word summary of those "pillars": Libertarianism.
Does Bezos really plan to put the Post in the "L" column -- if not in terms of political partisan affiliation, at least where editorial ideology is concerned?
If so, huzzah and kudos.
While the American newspaper community finds itself blessed by a libertarian paper here and there, most of them are smaller community publications.
From the New York Times to the Wall Street Journal to USA Today (and, until now anyway), the big players are 100% "establishment," though sometimes leaning ever so slightly "left" or "right" within a narrow spectrum of acceptable opinion.
Apart from an occasional novelty column, libertarian ideas mostly find themselves excluded. The largest overtly libertarian-leaning newspaper outfit (and a fine one at that) is the Orange County, California Register and its affiliated southern California chain. I love the Register, and not just because it occasionally publishes my own columns.
I'd love nothing more than seeing the movement I belong to get the Post as jewel in its media crown.
But as always, the devil is in the details. If I had a nickel for every time the word "libertarian" -- or even phrases like "personal liberties and free markets" -- got used incorrectly or dishonestly, I could spend my time racing my Ferrari between a Manhattan apartment and a gated-community LA McMansion instead of submitting libertarian op-eds to newspapers.
Does Bezos really support "free markets?" If so, how does that square with the billions of tax dollars the federal government spends with his companies -- for example, the $10 billion contract Amazon has with the Pentagon for its "Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure" project, or Blue Origin's billions of dollars in launch contracts with DoD and NASA?
Does Bezos really support "personal liberties?" If so, why does Amazon provide its Rekognition surveillance software to, among other government entities, US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement?
Color me skeptical. It seems more likely that Jeff Bezos's version of "personal liberties and free markets" is just version 2.0 of Elon Musk's whiny "free speech for me but not for thee" guff and corporate welfare queenery combo.
But please, Mr. Bezos, prove me wrong. And let me know if you're looking for libertarian op-ed writers.
